For celebrities, was it a very bad year?

David Bowie was one of an unusual number of famous people who died earlier this year.

For celebrities, was it a very bad year?

Don't believe the hype: it's not that more famous people are dying, it's that we have more famous people

For celebrities, was it a very bad year?

If you believe social media, which is an “if” so huge it should be rendered in bold capital letters in extra-large font, this has been a particularly gloomy year for celebrity deaths. But have more notable people than usual passed away in 2016?

In April, the BBC’s Obituaries Editor was tasked with checking if there was anything unusual about the number of well-known people dying, as many on social media had been claiming.

Nick Serpell counted the number of prepared BBC obituaries that ran across the network’s radio, TV and online platforms from January until the end of March for the years 2012-16.

And at that point he found that, yes, just looking at the first three months of the year, there had been a huge increase.

Twice as many notable people had died in this period of 2016 compared to the same period in 2015, and five times as many as in 2012.

The BBC points out that this is quite a crude way of measuring celebrity deaths.

It doesn’t do an obituary for every celebrity who dies and Serpell counted only prepared obituaries, rather than obituaries written after the event, or news reports that mention someone has died.

Then there’s the question of who counts as a celebrity in the first place. The BBC lists below show a clear skew towards UK politicians and actors. US television personality David Gest, for example, did not get a BBC obituary.

So has 2016 continued to be so dangerous and fateful for famous people?

No, Serpell says.

“The last six months of this year were broadly in line with the previous last six months of the previous four or five years,” he says.

“So we didn’t see that spike continuing throughout the 12 months.”

Across the whole year, there was a 30% increase in BBC prepared obituaries used in 2016 compared with 2015.

“In 2012, we had a total of 16,” says Serpell. “In 2013, it went to 24. In 2014, it rose again to 29.

“But well over half those deaths occurred in the first four months of the year. The rest of the year went back to a figure we considered normal over the past four or five years.”

One of the major reasons is that there are so many more “celebrities” around. We’re half a century on from the flourishing of TV and pop culture in the 1960s, which massively expanded the pool of public figures.